Chapter 43

The Seer Gets A Lesson About The Vampire King

Although Alucard had figured it would take a couple days for Mercedes to maintain more than a few minutes of consciousness at a time, she woke up in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Within the hour window of time he appreciated having, of Valarie and Walter being fast asleep so they'd be able to take first rounds of Xander care at dawn, and Seras had finished her shift of night watch and gone to bed so she could take the afternoon child duties. He had one short hour before Xander woke up at dawn like a little rooster, and then woke Walter for breakfast and Valarie for play. One hour where there wasn't a tv turned on, or a child playing loudly with his favorite hellhound, or Seras humming to herself, or Walter making an irritated noise or remark at Valarie, or Valarie singing in the shower, or a toy train set chugging along tracks.

One hour, that he very much looked forward to, of complete peace and quiet.

Mercedes woke up during that early morning hour. And instead of falling back to sleep after a sip of water, she stayed in a more coherent state.

And it took all of three minutes for her to go from mildly disoriented and appreciating the fact that she was alive, to absolutely furious with the progenitor of vampires and demanding answers.

Alucard could privately admit to himself that, perhaps, some of the causes of that anger was his fault and warranted, but as he tried to tell her, "I believe you're overreacting just a little. It's not as though I turned you..."

"I have fangs!" Mercedes snapped out in a panic, pointing to the aforementioned elongated teeth that she had felt scraping against her lip. "Fangs! Do you not see this?! Fangs! And I'm ridiculously thirsty and that damn light is way too bright and I can smell everything! Fils de salope, Alucard! Do you really think I'm too stupid to realize what that means?! What would you call this, if not the start of ghoulification?!"

"Temporary side effects," Alucard said with strained patience. "I told you, I didn't have any choice outside of allowing you to stay dead and making your son an orphan. I needed a way to keep your body animated while you couldn't do it for yourself and establish a connection to your soul to pull it back. I didn't put near enough blood into you to overwhelm your system and change you, these changes will dissipate as your body pushes my blood out and replaces it with your own. The fangs are already smaller than they were last night. At this rate, they should be completely gone within the next few days."

"Really?!" Mercedes asked incredulously. "If I'm remembering my Stoker correctly, didn't Mina Harker have lasting effects from just a little bit of your blood getting licked up?!"

"Firstly, that book isn't exactly a reliable retelling of events, not least of all because I'm clearly not dead," Alucard said with an edge to his voice. "And second of all, what I did to Mrs. Harker is quite different than what I did for you."

"Yeah, you put your blood directly into my veins, instead of going through the digestive track! Wouldn't that cause a swifter change?!"

"Mercedes, you're not going to end up like Mina did!"

"How do you know that?!"

"Because her blood didn't have the capability to push out mine before mine mutated hers enough to end up with a permanent partial shift to vampirism. Barring a full transfusion of my blood that would utterly overwhelm your system, your blood should naturally push mine out because it will want to keep its own influences."

Mercedes' train of thought came to an abrupt halt and she stared at the progenitor of vampires in absolute bafflement. "What... what the hell are you going on about? What makes my blood any different from hers? Why are you talking about blood like it has a mind of its own?

Alucard paced away from her bed to gather back up his composure. "This is not how I wanted to try having this conversation with you."

"What?! What conversation, Alucard?!"

"Mercedes, you're not in the healthiest of states right now. You should go back to sleep and we can discuss this when you've recovered more."

"Go back to sleep?! You expect me to go back to sleep after waking up with fangs?! Next time I wake up, it could be mindlessly drooling in a coffin!"

Alucard gave a facsimile of a sigh and, after a moment's consideration, sent out a psychic command to the others present in the house, forcing them into a deeper slumber so they'd not be able to overhear this conversation. Once he was certain servant vampires and humans alike weren't a potential problem, he turned to meet her golden-brown gaze and said stoically, "Believe it or not, I respect that you don't wish to become any kind of vampire. I have never turned anyone who has rejected the idea, which you did express to me. But whether my blood is in your veins or not, it's somewhat irrelevant at this point. I've been noticing certain things about you since we met. Things that I've had time to think on the last week we've been stuck in hiding and finally make full sense of. Particularly, the things that I sense when you're raising and channeling magic, the subtle effects it has on you."

"You mean the mood ring effect on my eyes?" Mercedes asked, still utterly confused. "Yeah, Seer! Remember?! That happens with us."

"It's not just your eyes!" Alucard said sharply. Her jaw clacked shut and she stared at him with a hint of fear creeping into those golden-brown eyes. He took several seconds to get an even better grip on his temper, reminding himself that from the "modern" noble woman's point of view this must be quite terrifying, especially as she hadn't been raised with the same knowledge he had been. He explained carefully, trying not to scare her further, "When we had our spar, or you were fighting against Anderson with your magic raised, your speed and strength started to become a few shades augmented..."

"That's called adrenaline and empathic vibes pushing my body to put out the chemical," Mercedes said, with the tone of a mother explaining something to a child. "That's not magical, that's normal."

Alucard glared at her. "Would you stop interrupting and being so damn obstinate?!" The priestess cringed again and went silent. "Maybe that's what you've thought because of what Tukiko told you during your training. Maybe that's what he truly believed. But it's not just those things. By the time I arrived to take over the fight with Anderson, your eyes and teeth had changed to a lesser extent than they are now, without my blood ever entering your veins. That's not normal, even for a Seer or dark magic user. And I would know better than most, because I've known a handful of seers and several dark magic users over the course of 600 years walking this earth. When you said you were a different and less malevolent branch on the dark powers family tree, you were speaking more truth than I think even you realized."

He could see in her expression that her panic and confusion was swiftly returning as she tried to make sense of the last observation. He walked back to where his chair was and took a seat so he wouldn't be looming over her, and continued speaking to try heading off a potential breakdown or misguided attempt to flee that could compromise her recovery. "Even with all the industrious research you did on me, I know you weren't able to find an answer as to how I became a vampire. And the reason is because I am the only person left living who knows that answer; the truth of my family origins has been a carefully guarded secret since our inception, and I've only revealed what I did to myself to one person, who I know didn't tell anyone else and has been dead for over a century. Even Abraham Van Hellsing wasn't able to use his magic tricks to pull those secrets from me while I was bound to his family; and believe me, he tried. He was fanatical in trying to discover what made me tick, how my powers worked, hoping some detail let slipped might give him the answer on how to permanently destroy me. While I value my privacy as highly as I obviously do, you're going to get an exclusive insight into some of those questions I know you've been dying to have answered.

"A very, very long time ago, demons, or 'daimons', as you prefer, walked among humans. It's not myth or superstition. It's a fact that's been obscured over the ages. I have no idea how humans managed to kill them off, or if some of them went back to whatever hellish plane of existence they came from, but I do know they no longer walk this world. While demons were among humans, however, some of them did more than fight or enslave or trade knowledge with humans. Some of them had relations with humans, either by force or guile or supposed mutual attraction. And on rare occasions, some of those liaisons led to halfbreeds being born, with powers inherited from their demonic parents, but superficially appearing like the human parent and being able to blend in among their kind. Some of the stories about some royal families having a right to rule because they're God's appointed shepherds of the mortal flocks, it's one part propaganda to keep peasants in line, and one part a spin on some of us having less than sanctified origins. Though, over time, most families bought their own hype, suppressed knowledge of where their power really came from, and told their descendants that they were just exceptional humans blessed by God.

"My family, House Draculesti, is descended from one of those demon halfbreeds. And while my family knew and passed on the truth of our bloodline a bit more honestly, parents would tell children that such cursed blood was a part of God's plan, choosing superior lines to harbor the powers of demons so that we could use them against the true demons if they ever returned, and to keep the weaker parts of humanity following God's laws. By the time I was born, the Draculesti bloodline was diluted enough that most of my family members might as well have been entirely human. Only a few, like my father and eldest brother, manifested small aspects of our heritage, like exceptional strength or agility, and my father had a very weak form of telepathy that made him a reasonable judge of character, when he was willing to be honest in interpreting what little he was able to read off of others. They spent their lives content with the knowledge that they were descended from a line that was greater than most humans; that even if it came from an initially cursed source, they had inherited a few boons to help keep our reign over our country and enacting God's Will on Earth. Despite whatever pride they had in our bloodline, though, they didn't seek growing those powers. My father cautioned against it because then we might draw unwanted attention and alarm the peasants; but he was a rather religious man, and I believe the reality was that he was terrified of what ran through his veins. And in the end, all their caution and empty pride accomplished was keeping them weak and unable to stop themselves from being brutally murdered when people came for them anyways for different reasons.

"I was born with the same abilities as my father and brother, but my talents began to exceed theirs as I grew older. I spent years wrestling with what I was, especially as I started to feel pulls of other types of mentalist powers that I knew my father didn't have. And there was an instinct growing, an instinct that demanded I fight and kill the enemies who were beneath me, who dared to challenge my power and threaten the lands that were rightfully mine. My demonic heritage pulled at me more than it did the rest of my family, but I tried to follow my father's lessons to keep it suppressed. I had certain things in my life that I wanted to protect, and that included protecting them from what was inside of me... But when I received word of my father's and my brother's murders, I realized my fate would eventually be the same. Unless, of course, I did something to take control of matters. And I started down a path of researching the occult and experimenting with my power, trying to turn my demonic heritage to my benefit so I could secure my reign from those like the petty boyars who had conspired against my father, and defend my country from the constant wars and pillaging lesser kings with bigger armies kept subjecting us to.

"Eventually, despite my limited resources and understanding of what I was doing, and through means I don't think are necessary to outline for this conversation, I succeeded in my aims beyond what I had originally thought possible. I managed to undertake dark enough magics that I harnessed the power in my blood and used it to transform myself into something different and beyond what my ancestor was. I became the first vampire to ever walk this earth."

The young woman huddled beneath blankets across from him, shaking with fear (and probably a fair bit of fatigue and pain), had tears begin to well up in her golden tinted eyes. After several long seconds of silence, she asked shakily, "Why... Why are you telling me all this?"

"Don't play stupid, Seer," the Vampire King said intently. "You know why, even if you don't want to admit it. From how your power manifests, I can tell you're not of the same exact demonic line I was. But one of those noble ancestors of yours clearly carried demonic heritage that aided them in clawing out political power for themselves, and they passed that blood down, until it eventually reached you."

Mercedes began to shake her head in denial, tears dislodging and making silent trails down wane cheeks.

Alucard continued, bluntly, so she couldn't turn a blind eye to it. "Oh yes, draga mea. I may not be bound to speak the truth, but I being completely honest right now. Outside of being one of my vampires, there's only one legitimate answer for how you have the extensive dark powers that you have, especially at your age, and for them to have the effects on you that they do. There's an ancient demonic bloodline of some kind running through those veins of yours. I'd wager it came from your maternal grandfather's side, as you mentioned the marquis' mother was intuitive, and I'm fairly certain from what I know of them that your maternal grandmother's side aren't the ones harboring such blood. If I go digging far enough back into your grandfather's genealogy, I'm sure that eventually I'd find a surname I recognize as being one of the ancient lines my family knew, that were considered suitable for me to look for marriage prospects from to try keeping our blood from becoming even more diluted. You can shake your head and cry all you want, go right ahead and keep doing it, but it won't change the truth of..."

"Shut up!" Mercedes shouted. "How dare you make fun of me like that! You... You're... You're just... You keep... I'm not... I am not..." The seer's face twisted in agonized understanding when she couldn't force herself to speak any of denials she wanted to say. With him laying things out so plainly as he understood, she didn't have any plausible alternatives to offer, and she couldn't simply accuse him of lying somehow because she couldn't think of where the lie might be. "Merde! I don't know why you're mindfucking me like this, but just shut up!"

"Mercedes..."

"Shut up, Alucard!" She gingerly rolled onto her side, turning away from facing him, still shaking her head in denial. "It's not... I'm not... Fuck!" Quiet crying turned to sobs and she buried her face against her pillow. It wasn't enough to keep him from hearing her muffled words. "Fuck! Why are you doing this?! This is... Everything was... Argh! Merde! Merdemerdemerde!"

"Mercedes, I'm not trying to mindfuck you..."

"Shut up!"

"You asked me why I'm telling you this."

"I don't... I don't... Fuck! Just... Alucard, shut up!"

"I took you for a lot of things, Seer, but a coward who can't face the truth wasn't one of them..."

There was a muffled scream, and then the tear stained pillow, the only thing she had close enough to grab, was whipped at the vampire. What she meant to shout at him, however, was broken off because the swift stretching movement caused pain from her lacerated side, cracked ribs, and impaled arm to flare well beyond what the painkillers in her IV could suppress. "Fuuuuck!" She gasped as her vision spun and became blurry, falling back against the bed. "Fils de salope..."

"Did you rip any stitches?" Alucard asked dryly.

"I don't think so... Fuck... You're such a provoking asshole..."

Alucard snorted back a humorless laugh. "Of all the things you could say, you're going to insult me?"

"You started it, calling me a coward... So fuck off, your majesty..."

Alucard couldn't hold back his laugh at that response. "Adding 'Your Majesty' doesn't negate the 'fuck off' portion."

"I am beyond caring about placating your ego right now," she muttered as she rolled away again and curled in a little on herself. "Gods! Why couldn't you just leave me alone?"

Alucard's amusement evaporated as quickly as it had formed. "Is that what you truly want?"

"Ye... May... Fuck! I want... I want... I don't know what exactly I want anymore... except that I'd like a quiet life for once! There! That's... that's something at least... Owww...Baiser ma vie..." Quiet crying resumed.

"Mercedes..."

"What?! What do you want me to say Alucard?!"

"...Do you want your pillow back?"

"...Yes."

Alucard shook his head with a smirk, and leaned over to put it back under her head.

Mercedes lifted her head enough to get the pillow back, and as he retreated back to the chair, she murmured sullenly, "You're still a colossal jerk..."

"As you say, draga mea."

Mercedes made a frustrated noise and then fell silent.

Alucard gave her a few minutes to calm herself. Eventually he said, "As to your question, in regards to why I'm telling you these things..."

Mercedes groaned miserably. "You're not going to leave this alone, are you?"

"Burying your head in the sand, or a pillow, won't change things," Alucard said stoically.

"There's got to be some other possible explanation..."

"What, then?"

"How should I know? I may be a seer, but I didn't even realize there was a potential problem until you said something..."

"Mercedes, you may want there to be another explanation, but it doesn't change reality." Alucard ignored the distressed whimpering noise she made and continued speaking. "And I am bringing it to your attention because, with or without influence from me, you are heading down the same path I did. Except you've been ignorant of just where it can lead because you didn't understand where it began, and up until now you've been traipsing along without regard for the costs. You need to start considering the costs because your usage of magic, especially dark magic in sustained quantities, will take a toll and the effects will eventually become permanent. I don't know what the end result of what you could turn yourself into is because your bloodline is different than mine was and you're putting your magic to slightly different purposes than I did. It's not like there's dedicated studies on such bloodlines and how different magic mutates them. But I know enough from personal experience that I can say, if you aren't careful, you are going to end up chipping away the human parts until there are none left.

"That's not necessarily a disaster waiting to happen, if it's done with careful thought and intent and you can keep yourself in check. Maybe, especially with all your interactions with my kind already influencing you, you could actively manipulate how your powers manifest, become some parallel form of vampire. Or maybe you'll become some new breed of demon altogether. Whatever you might turn yourself into, though, there's still mentally dealing with such a drastic change. And as I'm being completely honest with you right now, I'm going to tell you that part is even harder to manage than the change itself. You could end up like I was for many years- struggling to understand just what I had done to myself, and creating chaos almost everywhere I went until I could get my newfound surging powers and instincts under control. If you go down one of the paths that means purging yourself of your humanity and we remain associating with one another, I may be able to help lessen those shocks and struggles from the vantage point I have of experience.

"However you choose, if you end up transforming yourself by either carelessness or intent, you'll also have to live with the fact that your choice will effect your son. Because with that magically inclined miscreant you married and likely had just enough power to exacerbate the bloodline you were passing along, Xander's already manifesting powers. He'll see what's happening to you and, with as comfortable as that child already is with so many aspects of the supernatural, he'll want to follow in your footsteps. Whether you help or hinder him, he may very well succeed. Then he's going to go through the same struggles and choices. Perhaps the situation will stay contained to you two. But what if he breeds someday, before trying to transform himself? Or what if, like myself, you find alternative ways to make others like you? Will you make others? Or will you try to isolate yourself off? And how will you keep others from trying to take your bloodline by force in hopes they might be able to become what you are? Whether you like it or not, you'll have to face those choices and make those plans. And whether we maintain an association or go separate ways, if either of you get out of control, you'll be putting me in the position of needing to set things to rights, one way or other, so you don't freak out the humans en masse and start a new age of monster hunters plaguing those of us who largely keep under the radar.

"The only way you can avoid all of that is for you to stop using your magic as much as possible. Because every time you use magic, you're teasing at that part of your bloodline, feeding into it, making it stronger. If you want to avoid finding out what could happen by doing so, you're going to have to restrain yourself from using magic in all but life or death circumstances; and even in those, if it requires sustained magic usage, it's a trade of preserving your current existence in exchange for inching closer to another sort. And even if you want to stop using your magic, there's the issue of you now being in Isacriot's sights, and a problem we've yet had chance to discuss of there being some traitorous Elders who want you dead, and whoever else might eventually come along. If you choose not to take the risks of using magic to destroy them, you're going to need a new plan to survive."

"So, if your theory is correct, you're telling me I'm pretty much screwed no matter what I do..."

"No... Perhaps that might be what it feels like I'm saying, but in reality what I'm saying is that you need to come to some decisions in the very near future about where your priorities lie, and then take whatever measures are necessary to enact them. Winging it and halfway measures will get you killed or in a state where you might prefer death, but there are options available for whatever choice you wish to make that don't need to end in your death if you're careful."

Mercedes rubbed her face against the pillow and then asked in a detached voice, "Anything else? Any other bad news to drop?"

Alucard closed his eyes in frustration, trying yet again to keep from snapping out the first thing he was of a mind to say. "Mercedes, there's plenty of things to fill you in on, it's been a busy week, but you really should be resting right now. You can get further updates once you've gotten that rest."

She turned her head from the pillow enough to look at him. "You said something about traitorous Elders? What did you mean?"

"Mercedes, it would be better to discuss that at a later time, after you've had some rest and a chance to process what's already been discussed."

"This may somehow shock you, Alucard, but I'm too stressed out as it is to get some rest! Might as well get everything out of the way. What did you mean about the Elders?"

"And you call me impossible and provoking..."

"Would you rather I act like a 'coward" and ignore the mention of something else being wrong?"

"Did that comment really bother you that much, that now you're going to be unreasonably bullheaded about everything just to prove you're not?"

"I'm being quite serious right now. After your little hypothesis about my powers that you just dropped on me, how much worse can it get? Just get all the bad news out there, instead of stretching it out and prolonging my misery. Unless you don't want me to start getting on with finding ways to cope with whatever it is? Are you getting some sort of sadistic jollies by mentally torturing me?"

A frustrated growl rumbled in Alucard's throat. "You want to know? Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you..."

"Duly noted, your majesty. You warned me. Now out with it."

Alucard spent the next hour giving her exactly what she demanded. He explained that the red head he had shown her a mental image of was someone he had seen in the memories of the blood of her assailants when they first met, someone who had paid on another's behalf for her to be attacked. He explained he had plenty of suspicions about who might be behind the attack, but hadn't been able to immediate narrow them down. He explained observations he had of the Elders, Liam's territorial visit to his hotel. He told her about the details of his fight with Iscariot, that he had discovered through the blood of one operative that Iscariot had at least one spy in the Elder's ranks feeding them information; and learning from exchanges with Anderson and the Anderson doppelganger that Mercedes had clearly been purposefully put on their kill list, despite her family ties. He told her about witnessing one Elder kill another and then fleeing, as he was in route to protect her. He told her about her damn ward going off on him and why; and seeing the scars on her legs while in the hospital, and the several reasons he felt it necessary to involve Valarie. He told her about other Elders being sent out looking for them and having a conflict with his servants. He told her about what Valarie told him once she was picked up, that he had tracked her exhusband down on their way north, and that he had uncovered her former husband's murder-and-profit plot with an unknown vampire he referred to as 'Nic'. He told her about the further things he was able to get Valarie to tell him, and that he really didn't appreciate the seer intentionally obfuscating certain truths. He told her about the state of their current tentative safety, that her family and Liam had put bounties out on them, and someone was blowing up his and his servants' properties to try pissing him off enough to come out of hiding. Something that, even if he wanted to, he couldn't track down and deal with because, again, her damn ward kept him on a tight leash near her. He told her about Pip's call, and that her mercenary cousin was going to be arriving the day after tomorrow to aid in evacuating her, Xander, and Valarie as soon as it was possible to safely and discreetly move her because, while Alucard hadn't been able to get Pip to reveal the specifics over the phone, there were apparently other dangerous contacts her family had outside the Wild Geese and Pip was worried they'd be sent to remove the humans from the vampire's care.

By the time he was done, the seer was even paler and shaking again, looking about ready to faint. It wasn't the least surprising, when she eventually managed to re-find her powers of speech, that she demanded furiously, "Get out of my room, right now! I can't even... Son of a... I need... What the fuck?! Arrrghh! Just get out! I need to think and I can't even begin to deal with you right now!"

Alucard gave a stoic nod and said, "As you say." As she gave an overwhelmed scream into her pillow, he gestured to his coffin and had it move itself to the basement with his servants, and silently followed after it.